Burned area
satellite only60,065ha
Union of 2 GWIS (Copernicus) perimeters: overlapping areas count once.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 15 Jan 2019 – 5 Feb 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Central Highlands (Tas.) fire, January 2019 Central Highlands (Tas.)
Out · last detection 5 Feb 2019, 14:26 UTC
The fire started on 15 January 2019 in Central Highlands (Tas.), Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 60,065 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the largest fire in Tasmania since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 34 in Australia in 2019, of 288.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Break O'Day · 2019
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only22days
15 Jan 2019 to 5 Feb 2019: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 5 Feb 2019, 14:26 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only15 Jan 2019
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 15 Jan 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only6,025
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 788 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 15 Jan 2019 – 5 Feb 2019
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only19,594MW
Total radiative power on 22 January 2019; hotspots that day: 555.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 22 Jan 2019
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model17.7FWI · moderate
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 2.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 15 Jan 2019, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model28.6°C · 23% RH
High of 28.6 °C and minimum humidity of 23% on 15 January 2019; gusts of 85 km/h on 25 January 2019.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 15 Jan 2019 – 5 Feb 2019
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 60people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 7.9 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2020).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 60,096 ha
- Dates
- 15 Jan 2019 – 5 Feb 2019
- Name
- Central Highlands (Tas.)
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/central-highlands-tas-2019-01?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire central-highlands-tas-2019-01.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-01-15 | 67 | 468 | 28.6 | 13 | 23 | 23.5 | 65.9 | 0.1 | 17.7 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-16 | 56 | 1,641 | 25.7 | 9.9 | 20 | 15.8 | 40.7 | 0.2 | 15.3 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-17 | 30 | 469 | 23.7 | 13.8 | 42 | 28.3 | 76.3 | 5.6 | 2.8 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2019-01-18 | 189 | 9,964 | 22.7 | 6.9 | 37 | 26 | 61.6 | 1.1 | 6.2 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-01-19 | 143 | 1,734 | 13.7 | 5.2 | 53 | 24.5 | 58 | 0.4 | 6.8 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-01-20 | 309 | 7,701 | 19 | 7.9 | 54 | 23.3 | 57.6 | 0 | 7.4 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-01-21 | 605 | 17,396 | 25.1 | 11.9 | 32 | 19.1 | 47.9 | 0 | 11.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-22 | 555 | 19,594 | 25.1 | 11.6 | 25 | 18.4 | 45.4 | 0 | 14.1 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-23 | 144 | 5,515 | 18.7 | 7.5 | 34 | 21.4 | 52.9 | 1.6 | 5.8 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-01-24 | 810 | 18,365 | 20.2 | 7.5 | 39 | 27 | 56.5 | 0.7 | 10.3 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-01-25 | 319 | 1,734 | 26.9 | 11.9 | 38 | 34.7 | 84.6 | 1.1 | 15.3 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-26 | 247 | 6,409 | 22.1 | 7.4 | 33 | 22.7 | 55.1 | 0 | 13.8 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-27 | 491 | 9,203 | 15.5 | 6.8 | 41 | 33.8 | 79.6 | 0.6 | 15.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-28 | 491 | 12,881 | 20.6 | 6.6 | 42 | 25.9 | 61.9 | 0 | 13.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-29 | 698 | 10,141 | 21.4 | 11.5 | 27 | 25.5 | 62.3 | 0 | 17.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-30 | 204 | 3,507 | 23.4 | 11.2 | 19 | 23.2 | 60.8 | 0.8 | 18.4 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-01-31 | 1 | 9 | 14.6 | 3.2 | 51 | 27.8 | 66.2 | 6.4 | 1.5 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2019-02-01 | 41 | 281 | 16.8 | 1.8 | 22 | 13.8 | 33.1 | 0 | 3.5 | muy_bajo | 1 |
| 2019-02-02 | 56 | 375 | 17.2 | 8.1 | 56 | 22.8 | 53.6 | 0 | 6.9 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-02-03 | 151 | 3,817 | 22.8 | 12.4 | 25 | 21.6 | 53.3 | 0 | 14.2 | moderado | 1 |
| 2019-02-04 | 357 | 6,594 | 19.4 | 7.6 | 34 | 18 | 42.1 | 0.9 | 9.1 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-02-05 | 61 | 2,526 | 14.6 | 6.5 | 62 | 18.2 | 44.6 | 0 | 7.9 | bajo | 1 |
| 2019-02-06 | 0 | 0 | 16.7 | 8 | 55 | 19.4 | 46.4 | 0.1 | 8.4 | bajo | 0 |
| 2019-02-07 | 0 | 0 | 20.1 | 11.5 | 54 | 21.4 | 52.9 | 13.1 | 0.5 | muy_bajo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 60,065ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 22days
- 15 Jan 2019 – 5 Feb 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 15 Jan
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 6,025
- in a single hotspot: 788 MW
- Danger at start
- 18
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 6.4GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
15 Jan5 Feb
5 Feb 2019
How it evolved, day by day
15 Jan
22 Jan
30 Jan
4 Feb
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
29°high
85km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.1 mm on 7 Feb.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Central Highlands (Tas.) where it started59,987 ha reached on 15 Jan7.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area7.9 ha
Residents≈ 60
Inside the perimeter there were about 7.9 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
Started with Strong wind: 44 % of the area in Australia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jan | 28.6 °C | 23 % | 66 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Jan | 25.7 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 17 Jan | 23.7 °C | 42 % | 76 km/h | 5.6 mm | Very low 3 |
| 18 Jan | 22.7 °C | 37 % | 62 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 6 |
| 19 Jan | 13.7 °C | 53 % | 58 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 7 |
| 20 Jan | 19.0 °C | 54 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 21 Jan | 25.1 °C | 32 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 22 Jan | 25.1 °C | 25 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 23 Jan | 18.7 °C | 34 % | 53 km/h | 1.6 mm | Low 6 |
| 24 Jan | 20.2 °C | 39 % | 56 km/h | 0.7 mm | Low 10 |
| 25 Jan | 26.9 °C | 38 % | 85 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 26 Jan | 22.1 °C | 33 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 27 Jan | 15.5 °C | 41 % | 80 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 28 Jan | 20.6 °C | 42 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 29 Jan | 21.4 °C | 27 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 30 Jan | 23.4 °C | 19 % | 61 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 31 Jan | 14.6 °C | 51 % | 66 km/h | 6.4 mm | Very low 2 |
| 1 Feb | 16.8 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 2 Feb | 17.2 °C | 56 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 3 Feb | 22.8 °C | 25 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 4 Feb | 19.4 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 0.9 mm | Low 9 |
| 5 Feb | 14.6 °C | 62 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 6 Feb after | 16.7 °C | 55 % | 46 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 8 |
| 7 Feb after | 20.1 °C | 54 % | 53 km/h | 13.1 mm | Very low 0 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 17.7, a minimum humidity of 23% and 2 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 1.
FWI at the start
17.7
Minimum humidity
23 %
Days without rain
2
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Central Highlands (Tas.) fire, January 2019
60,065 ha
22 days
FWI 17.7
Min. humidity 23 %
Break O'Day fire, December 2019
15,373 ha
21 days
FWI 15.6
Min. humidity 27 %
114 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.7 mm on 20 Jan.
What happened to them
Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
13.1 mmfirst rain
7 Feb2 days after it ended
85km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 5 Feb, and on 7 Feb 13.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 8 Jan 2019
After · 12 Feb 2019
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 6,025Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV
Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Central Highlands (Tas.) fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 January 2019 and 5 February 2019: 22 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 60,065 hectares (600.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Central Highlands (Tas.) (59,987 ha, 7.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 85 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 6,025 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.